From Manual to Digital: The Journey of Columbia Hospitality with HelloShift

Unlocking Operational Efficiency and Enhanced Guest Engagement: How HelloShift Transformed Columbia Hospitality’s Approach to Staff Collaboration and Digital Guest Communications

Overview

For nearly 30 years, Seattle-based Columbia Hospitality has proudly led in property management and hospitality, ensuring exceptional guest experiences and operational excellence. They manage luxury and boutique hotels, resorts, and golf courses in the Pacific Northwest and other U.S. regions, continually setting and exceeding industry standards.

Today, Columbia Hospitality has a significant presence in the hospitality industry, passionately focusing on team member development and a positive work culture. This commitment leads to maximized asset value and outstanding guest satisfaction. By leveraging advanced technology, they significantly enhance operational efficiency, deeply engage guests, and make informed, data-driven decisions for superior service. 

Challenges

As a tech-forward organization, Columbia Hospitality is committed to finding the best digital tools to achieve operational excellence and high guest satisfaction, ensuring top-notch service and seamlessly streamlined operations.

Morgan Davis, General Manager of The Finch in downtown Walla Walla, Washington, launched the property with HelloShift and was genuinely impressed by its capabilities. This positive experience inspired Columbia Hospitality to expand HelloShift’s use to other properties, significantly enhancing their operations and guest services. 

David Gavaldon, a Task Force Operations Manager at Columbia Hospitality, implemented HelloShift at Hotel Zoso in Palm Springs, The Marcus Whitman, and The Lenox Collection. While there are many hotel management platforms currently on the market, Gavaldon said, “We needed a quick and efficient way to streamline processes for these properties while facilitating effective communication among team members so they can do their very best work.” 

Columbia Hospitality partnered with HelloShift for its comprehensive features and tools, perfectly addressing specific issues at each property. “The all-encompassing toolkit made perfect sense for the specific issues that needed to be immediately addressed at each of these properties,” said Gavaldon. 

HelloShift offers features tailored to the hospitality industry’s unique needs. HelloShift provides an ‘all-in-one toolkit’ for hotel operations, preventing data silos and eliminating the need for multiple apps. Columbia Hospitality was particularly interested in the Staff Collaboration and Guest Messaging solutions. 

Columbia Hospitality also wanted to integrate HelloShift with Oracle OPERA Cloud, which was already in use at their properties.

The HelloShift Impact

Implementing HelloShift’s Staff Collaboration and Guest Messaging profoundly addressed significant communication challenges, resulting in dramatically greater operational efficiency and vastly improved guest interactions. The seamless integration with Oracle OPERA Cloud also enhanced their tech stack, leading to better overall performance.

Here are specific scenarios where HelloShift made a significant impact:

Guest Messaging Improvements. HelloShift’s Guest Messaging tools have significantly improved communication at The Finch, greatly enhancing the guest experience and delighting our visitors. “We receive positive feedback constantly from our guests about how responsive our team is with communication,” said Davis. Guests at The Finch are particularly delighted by the texting features, which allow for quick, personalized responses using the Snippets feature. This has revolutionized their guest interactions, creating a sense of pride among our team.

Davis noted that staff quickly adopted the guest communication tools because features like Snippets are easy to implement. “Team members love the autonomy and ability to customize their own responses to guests, enhancing their communication effectiveness.”

Automated Guest Messaging tools answer common questions in advance, reducing surprises and better preparing guests for their stay. “Proactive pre-arrival messaging, using both text and email, effectively addressed common inquiries and set clear expectations before a guest even arrived,” said Gavaldon.

Employee Engagement and Task Management. The Staff Collaboration tool fosters a sense of accountability and significantly enhances operational efficiency at the three properties by integrating staff from different departments into one seamless messaging platform, allowing smoother operations and empowering our team. 

Davis deeply appreciates HelloShift’s workflow management tools like Staff Collaboration for providing a strong sense of accountability at The Finch. From a leadership perspective, HelloShift offers tremendous oversight. “Being able to manage a 24-hour operation, a leader really needs a robust platform like HelloShift. The beauty of its design is that you can access it from home and always have visibility and transparency into what’s going on in real-time ― allowing a GM to monitor the property at any time from any location ― offering real peace of mind.”

HelloShift Integration with Oracle OPERA Cloud. Columbia Hospitality now integrates HelloShift with Oracle OPERA Cloud, a platform that accelerates innovation and secures data, bringing a new level of excitement and security. This property management platform orchestrates hotel operations, tracks guest preferences, and manages room inventory and rates, ensuring a seamless experience for our guests.

The expansion of HelloShift at Columbia Hospitality was a resounding success, leading to significant operational improvements. “The impact of going digital with HelloShift was enormous,” recalls Gavaldon. Employees responded enthusiastically, reaffirming the choice of HelloShift for its effective communication and task management solutions.

Morgan Davis put it best: “Using HelloShift’s many functions eliminates the need for multiple platforms, creating a sense of convenience and satisfaction. I’ve worked at many properties in my career and have used many traditional and fragmented tools, but now HelloShift simply brings them all together in one cohesive platform.”

Guest Messaging & Website Chat to understand the guest needs. Contactless Checkin to empower guests with self-service. Staff Collaboration and Housekeeping Management to deliver phenomenal hotel service delivery.

Digitize your hotel with Staff Collaboration, Guest Messaging, Contactless Checkin, WebChat, and Housekeeping in one app.